New Zealand Herald - Television industry

Sky Television New Zealand are plannning to add a new specialist Documentary channel to their meagre lineup. The cleverly titled Documentary Channel will launch in November 2006, following next month's launch of MTV NZ and the localised relaunch of kids channel Nickelodeon.

Richard Driver (Visionary TV) will manage the new channel, which Sky say "will be available to all SKY digital subscribers, representing 43% (huh?! What are you people on?!!) of all television homes nationwide"... (presumably what they actually mean is "all SKY Digital subscribers who are paying us at least $46 a month - not those who are just paying us $18 a month to rent a box to get clearer pictures of the free-to-air broadcasters... albeit with lots of digital blotching because we compress them so much").

The New Zealand produced channel plans to offer "the very best of home-grown and international documentaries", which will be sourced "from the existing substantial library of New Zealand documentaries as well as established and respected international and festival sources".

The Documentary Channel is aimed at "discerning SKY viewers" (which may exclude the 530,000+ viewers who tuned into State TV2's Nicky Watson special on the once-respected current affairs show 20/20, now reduced to - as Ric Salizzo put it - 'Freak of the week' shows ;-)

On a related note, Sky TV is promising more channels and less rain fade, when it moves to the new Optus D1 satellite in September. The new satellite will have "more power", and will deliver greater capacity... It could boost Sky's capacity by 25% to a total of 75 channels - depending on the level of image compression they go with.